“The simple answer is to allow tape recorders for all: no party is disadvantaged and an Ã¢â‚¬ËœofficialÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ recording is there for checking. This is how it works in other countries. But that is to ignore the root objection of the courts: that they are losing control of how court proceedings are presented to the public.

The courtsÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ refusal to allow people to tape-record benefits a few private transcription companies whom the court approves in cosy deals. These people have exclusive rights to tape- record or listen to official recordings and then transcribe them. The cost to the individual of hiring them is aboutÃ‚Â£150-Ã‚Â£250 per hour of typing.

Many trials in the upper courts are now officially recorded, yet these records are not accessible to the public. All High Court hearings have been digitally recorded since February 2010. When I spoke to the courtÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s governance officer he told me there were no plans to make these accessible directly to the public. Why not?

(Ironically, I think this Heather Brooke article has been pasted in from the Times, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to link to it. This is ironic, as I say, because Heather Brooke has today backed the Times’ paywall as the only adequate response to the need to compensate journalists).

“The Contempt of Court Act 1981 does not allow sound recordings to be made without the court’s permission. It’s also an offence to take photographs or make sketches (in court) of judges, jurors and witnesses Ã¢â‚¬â€œ although the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 says that doesn’t apply to the supreme court. Since there isn’t a statutory ban on creating text by means of electronic devices, it surprises me that journalists and bloggers haven’t already lobbied British judges about reporting directly from the courtroom.

There are some lawyers and journalists who have reservations about this: ‘You’d need to trial it, to see how it worked,’ says Mike Dodd, editor of Media Lawyer. ‘I’d be very suspicious about tweeting Ã¢â‚¬â€œ I’m not sure that court cases are the sort of thing where you’d want to put out short, pithy messages.’

The difference between scribbling notes (publishing later) and filing copy instantly from the courtroom using an electronic device is self-evidently slight and there’s a lot to be said for the sort of full, accurate, contemporaneous, reports of court hearings that live-blogs and twitter reporting could achieve.”